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I was actually in Greece recently, I have a question. How has the Greek language stayed relatively the same, at least when compared with other modern languages when compared with their ancient counterparts? Even the alphabet is the same!
@@polyMATHY_Luke Hi, great channel, I subscribe since the start. There is this sound of ancient Y in modern french and modern German, in french it's "u" like in : deja vu, in German it's: "ü", the exactly same sound. These are the only 2 living languages with this particular sound. My theory is that in Messalía, modern Marseille , where ancient Greek has been spoken since the start, french got developed because of Caesar, imposing Latin as an official administrative language, but people spoke there latin with ancient Greek pronunciation so: french got born.... Modern Greek on the contrary is like ancient Greek with latin pronunciation and turk pronunciation later on.😅 You can see it especially with the sound R...😂 So, good luck for the future ❤
There are still some Greeks around the Peloponnese and Attica that pronounce certain words with upsilon as if it were /u/. The example of Ζήκος from the old Greek movie «ο Μπακαλόγατος» comes to my mind, where he says "ξουρίζω" instead of "ξυρίζω" -if I recall the scene correctly.
Also the "iotacization" of the "etas" was not universal either, in some cases it just became an epsilon, hence why today we have εμεις from ημεις, αστέρας/αστέρι from αστηρ or σίδερο from σίδηρος, at least in demotic/standard modern Greek.
Μερικά παραδείγματα αυτής της διασώσης είναι πανελλήνια, όπως το μυσταξ -> μουστάκι, μα τα πιο χαρακτηριστικά, νομίζω, υπάρχουνε στα τσακώνικα (κύων -> κούε). Πρέπει να θυμάμαι όμως ότι σε μερικές περιπτώσεις (πριν από πι και κάππα) δεν πρόκειται για αρχαισμό αλλά για μεταγενέστερη τροπή i < u, όπως παρατηρούμε λογου χάρη στο σηπία -> σουπιά και στο λαϊκό λήμμα τρύπα -> τρούπα
4:03 In Georgian Y from Greek words borrowed in middle ages are transformed into vi sound. so for example Cyprus in Georgian is კვიპროსი /kviprosi/ in the past we were using single letter ჳ which corresponded to Greek Y so we would Write კჳპროსი.
So Gregorian uses v-prothesis, how interesting! Do you know whether this only concerns Greek Y or also other sounds (previously /u/?) in Modern Gregorian? The v-prothesis isn't that uncommon in other Indo-European languages or dialects, i.e. in Central-Slavic dialects - Belarusian, Slovak, Ukranian 'pavuk' or Czech 'pavouk' (spider) from Proto-Slavic *pàǭkъ (via an intermediate form /pauk/).
@@Srga91 I think no. I think we just didn't have a sound which corresponded to y sound(Close front rounded vowel) so we replaced it with /vi/. also we were writing /u/ sound with two letters ოჳ like greek oy. but later these two letters merged into one letter უ.
@@nugzarmikeladze Thanks for the explanation 👍 The /u/ used to be written the same way in Old Church Slavonic as well, first as оу, then later reduced to у. Would you be so kind and also answer the following question? What about /u/ and /i/ in syllable-initial position? Are there any irregularities in writing or is it always a simple /u/ and /i/-sound?
A little extra piece of information: Romanian 'jur' meaning "vicinity" can only come from a provincial Latin *gjurus which is of course from Greek gýros. Apparently the */ju/ represents a third way to try to deal with the /y/.
That's also the way French /y/ was borrowed into English; for instance French "fume", "tube", "ubiquité", "pur", "musée", English "fume", "tube", "ubiquity", "pure", "museum", etc. Note that a lot of these have lost the initial /j/ in american english though.
@@leonxydias893 Well, it is the Latin pronunciation itself that is a 'third way' because Romans who were not proficient in saying [y] would normally go with either [i] or [u] but have here opted for both.
There are many points Luke makes here about the evolution of the pronunciation of a language separate from it's written form, which I've internally been aware of, but the way he phrases it and puts it into words is so nice to hear. I think more people who speak modern languages should be aware of this fact and recognize that in the sometimes confusing spelling of words, especially modern English!
This is amazing. In some areas of Greece we still use sounds and phonetics as used in ancient Greece in certain words. It is amazing how this language still exists to this day and we have people like you diving deep into this. Greetings and love from Greece. Also I have never heard in Greece the name Πύρρος pronounced with a straight /i/ sound more than /u/ sound. Saying it with a straight /i/ sound will be heard as strange. It has a more barytone pronounciation rather than a high pitch pronounciation. Same with other words that incloude υ.
In English it was /u:/ > /y/ and then /i/. Well actually /ai/ because of the Great Vowel Shift. Well /y/ was in Old English commonly used for plural nouns like mys being plural of mus.
In German we still use the ü sound with words that have a y and came from the Greek. However, I can only think of Xylophon which if spelled as pronounced would be Ksülofon 😊
Fascinating! Thanks for this wonderfully put together video. It’s so interesting that this vowel has undergone all these varying changes, sometimes going back to previous pronunciation, and sometimes being preserved in modern dialects. I’m not as educated as I’d like to be in modern Greek (of any dialect), even though I come from a diaspora family, so I’m really happy and grateful to see Greeks in the comments who are giving modern examples that speak to what you are showing in this video. It’s stuff I would probably never have heard in my community here in Canada, and it’s so lovely to see how your videos draw in such interesting info to add to what you present. Thank you!
English /y/ was unrounded to/i/ around the same time as byzantine /y/. In "foreign" words and names with original Latin y or Greek upsilon the "y" spelling is retained, but in native words "y" became obsolete for a while, until it replaced final "i" and initial ȝ.
Many examples of modern Greek where the Υ is pronounced as u, especially in dialects and informal speach , τuμπανο, μuστακι, ξuραφι, τρuπα etc etc. In Cypriot Greek the say εσu instead of εσύ and if I scratch my memory more I could think of many more examples
In demotic greek (the people's greek language) there are a couple of words that are still pronounced with the /y/ sound: - κυρία /ky'ria/ - προκοίλι /pro'kyli/ Also, in many words of demotic greek the /y/ sound is replaced by a /u/ sound. For example: - Κουμιώτης (man from Kyme) instead of Κυμιώτης - Κρουστάλλω (given name deriving from the greek word for crystal) instead of Κρυστάλλω - τρούπα (hole) instead of τρύπα - κουτί (box) instead of κυτίον - τούμπανο (drum) instead of τύμπανο - σούρνω (to drag) instead of σύρω - στουπί (kind of oakum for barrels, bottles etc.) instead of στυππίον etc. Also, there were until recently certain modern greek dialects (like Old Athenian, Kymiot, Maniot, Megarean etc.) which had still the /y/ sound.
I think that traces of the /y/ pronunciation of υ can be heard even today in Greece for example in the pronunciation of the word γύφτος (gypsy) which is sometimes jokingly pronounced as γιούφτος.
I thought it was just a joke but it might be true.. My grandfather used to call me like that every time he saw me. the most memorable thing I remember from him 😕
thank you for this video! your content is insanely good and i recommend it to basically anyone who's starting to get interested in anything language-related this video was so interesting i watched it while having lunch as if it were an action movie about Υυ
Hey Luke, grate video as always! I don't know if anybody pointed it out yet but in Italy many philosophy and latin/greek teachers when rendering ancient greek 'Y' turn it into 'IU', for example 'ὕβρις' becomes 'iubris' or 'fiusis' for 'φύσις'.
Well, as a Greek myself, I can say that upsilon's pronunciation in Ancient Greek is one of the only things that Erasmus got right. Because even today, upsilon in many words (τούμπανο ή τύμπανο, ξουράφι ή ξυράφι, κρούσταλλο ή κρύσταλλο, τρούπα ή τρύπα, μύστακι ή μουστάκι, σκύζω ή σκούζω etc). There are many examples of upsilon still pronounced in their original form, just under the appearance of the dipthong ου. Plus, in the lone upsilon in many Greek words, at times you can hear a slight ü sound, especially if before the upsilon there's the consonant Σ (Συρία for example).
My favourite usage of the letter Y is in the Bernese dialect of Swiss German. They distinguish between a closed frontal vowel like in the second syllable of "happy", and a near-closed frontal vowel like in "kit". The former is written with Y, and the latter with I.
I think you'll be happy to know that Poles do the same thing you are talking about, which I'm not sure Barnese or Swiss dialect use (almost the same - our 'i' is monophthongized "happy" or "fleece" while 'y' resembles "kit" vowel)
I can't believe you shoot this video in Centocelle, literally metres from my home! 😍 And I'm glad you didn't point to the "e" in "femily" as an error, because it's actually a wordplay... Great video, as always, Luke!
Ciao Tiziano! Sono contento se ti piace il video. Rispetto a Femily, è un gioco di parola in che senso? Io l’avevo capito solo come la pronuncia solita italiana.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Non sono sicurissimo e spero di aver interpretato bene. Pensavo che fosse un errore, finché un giorno sono entrato e ho notato appeso alla parete un quadretto con le foto di tutti i membri della famiglia e i loro nomi, e tra loro la più piccola, una bimba dal nome di Emily... Così ho capito che "femily" poteva essere un gioco su "Emily's family"... Non ho chiesto conferma però. E la foto è di tanti anni fa (quando aprirono la pizzeria, credo), perciò Emily ora potrebbe essere grande...
Very interesting! So whether we pronounce y as i or ü in ancient Greek words, it's not necessarily because most of them came through Latin (or through English), but because they were also pronounced differently in Greek throughout the ages. And I'm saying this as we natively have both i and ü but still have „inconsistent" pronounciation when it comes to Greek words. We pronounce Hyperion as Hüperión, but hyperbola is hiperbola. Btw. we also have phonemic length in vowels, so both í and ű exist separately, they are not just stressed forms marked with an umlaut like in German, where they really say űber, not über - or schőn, not schön etc. But I'm digressing too much. Don't get me wrong, but I love that fact how Luke always pronounces everything correctly. The pronounciation of ü and ű is perfect, and even ö and ő [IPA ø and ø:] are very good. Having said that, my classical Latin pronounciation is "getting there", my ancient Greek is still "nowhere near". :D
Fan fact: part of the refugees that came to Greece from Asia Minor, at 1922, (prob those that were living in rural parts), were pronouncing the "υ" as "ου", and were being mocked by the mainland Greeks who were calling them "οί αουτοί" (because the word "αυτός"-pronounced "αουτός" by the refugees, was obviously in the most frequent use).
As far as I know the southern dorian dialects never experienced that original shift from /u/ to /y/ as much as Attic and Ionic. Which is why Tsakonian especially might have retained the /u/ in place of υ to that degree (except ofc. for words descending from later Koiné). But they've even retained an evolved digamma in a few words; «κουβάνε» from «*κυϝάνεος» probably (modern Greek κυανός/"cyan").
Great video as always! Here's an interesting fact: old typographers used to maintain the separate glyph ὔ which is used solely on one single word: the word ὔψιλον itself! Gorgeously kinky müstache by the way :)
In north California accent (San Francisco Bay Area), there’s a sound change from u to iu or y, especially among young people. It’s written in some research papers. I also hear my son pronouncing it like this. “Move” sounds like [mjuv] or [myv]. My native language distinguishes [u] and [y] so it’s pretty annoying to me.
Don't even get me started on this. In British English, the long "oo" in words like moon, move, shoe, you etc. can sound completely different depending on which region you are from. Some even diphthongise it. A TV advert stirred up the pot a decade ago, some people said it was taking the p*ss out of regional accents. But it was absolutely funny! Just search for "anything for yow".
This is very noticeable with RUclipsr Scott Manley, who talks about [by:stəs] and flying to the [my:n]. He does live in California, but he's originally from Scotland, and I've always assumed that it's a Scottish accent.
The /u(:)/ to /y(:)/ to /i(:)/ and the /o:/ to /u:/ shifts also happen in the central and southeastern Yiddish dialects. The shifts of /u/ to /y/ and /o/ to /u/ happened to some romance languages, such as Occitan, Romansch, and French.
Hello Luke! There is possible evidence that the distinction survived in Constantinople until the 14th century. The Arab traveler Ibn Battuta visited Constantinople around the year 1332 and writes: "Our entry into Constantinople the Great was made about noon or a little later, and they rang their bells until the very skies shook with the mingling of their sounds. When we reached the fist gate of the king's palace we found there about a hundred men, with an officer on a platform, and I heard them saying "Sarakinu, Sarakinu," ["Saracen, Saracen"] which means Muslims." Presumably they were saying, "Σαρακηνοί." Since οι and υ had merged centuries before, and Arabic does not possess the frontal υ, it is reasonable to assume that the sound he was hearing was closer to the Arabic u than to i, indicating a probable survival of the frontal υ, at least in the imperial court. I love your channel! Apologies for the late comment, and keep up the good work!
In cypriot greek we still pronounce certain words with υ, inherited directly from ancient and /or medieval greek with /u/instead of /i/.Examples are ξουριζω, xurizo instead of ξυριζω, xirizo,I shave γρουσος ,ghrousos instead of χρυσος chrisos,gold μουγια ,muya instead of μυγαmiga,fly μουττη ,mutte instead of μυτη ,mite ,nose.
5:19 Wait, really? I was under the impression that the monophthong in "down" was a retention from Middle English /du:n/ and that Modern Scots /y/ in /myn/ comes from Northern Middle English /ø:/ in /mø:n/. Simon Roper has a video on the Great Vowel Shift in Northern England which says that's what happened there, so I'd be surprised if Scots differs from Northern British English in this regard.
Once upon a time in America, an ancient Greek play was performance using Greek actors. This brought on some debate. The Greeks refused to say their lines in what the universities claimed to be ancient Greek. Instead the actors used their modern native tongue.
Was there a divide on υ pronounciation between educated and non-educated speekers in the Late Byzantine era? Because I remember reading this somewhere...
@@polyMATHY_Luke I've found where I had found it. It's in the Wikipedia page for Medieval Greek, in the section of Phonology. It talks about some other evidence for the distinct sound of οι/υ and also talks about the distinction being made "at least in educated speech" because of course we focus mostly on the formal and written form of Byzantine Greek. It also mentions that there is clear evidence for the existence of the distiction until at least the early 11th century because Micheal the Grammarian was making fun of a bishop for their confusion and also Georgian transliterations keep distinguishing οι/υ from the others until around that time(10th century). (So there is a possibility that in some non-mainstream/non-formal dialects it wasn't distinguished that long or as you mentioned it was distinguished for a lot more time or it became /u/ again. It's more complex in regards to dialects of course but not any real evidence for an distinction in regards to education(in the same dialects) before the confusion had already started happening, the grammarian and the bishop)
I have only recently found this channel, and after looking at a few of your videos, I am curious to know if you have ever listened to the liturgy of the Greek Orthodox church.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Awesome! I grew up with Greek and English and enjoy passing on information about the language and all of its forms. Some channels are cringe in how they pronounce just the alphabet. I appreciate your videos and what the general public can learn from them. H γιαγιά μου είναι Ελληνίδα ( Γαστούνη Ηλείας).
Thanks for your video! My question is, would the halfway u-i pronunciation of υ in Attic also apply to diphthongs such as αυ ωυ ηυ and ευ? From what I gather from your research ου would be pronounced as a regular u perhaps a long sound. But what about the rest of the diphthongs with υ?
Interesting how many languages use the letter y yet use it to represent entirely different sounds than [y]. Then there are languages that have the sound but use a different letter to represent it. In Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish the letter y is still used to represent the same [y] sound as it does in classical Latin (and originates from ancient Greek), but I wonder if they are the only ones.
Interesting. In Danish it is still pronounced this way. And in Cyrillic y stands for "oo" sound, basically letter u. Also in my language of Lithuanian y is the long "ee" sound while i is pronounced as short and crisp, well "i" like in 'bit', not i in 'Iceland' (sorry, I do not remember international phonetic alphabet)
Y in Welsh 🏴 is usually pronounced as the schwa or, depending on context as a soft i. It's an imortant word in Welsh as y (by itself) is the definate article (the) which is pronounced as the schwa. The y in the video sounds like u pronounced on Welsh.
@@polyMATHY_Luke It seems that the accent shifted after the 3rd Crusade, when our island came under the French and a few centuries later under the Venetians, I'm not sure though. I've read in Leontios Machairas chronicle (14th-15th century) that the "sh" sound was already apparent
@@LNTutorialsNL Isolated elements of ancient Green grammar and syntax that Standard Modern Greek lacks, mix of primordial Greek (even Mycenean) words, along with Koine, Old French, Occitan, Venetian, Turkish and a bit of English. Not counting accent. Nevertheless we are easily understood by Cretans and especially Dodecanesians
In spelling, these shifts seem big and it’s very interesting and important to study them, but in reality the differences acoustically must me small. I mean a english speaker from Boston can be mostly understood by a Southerner even though there are huge differences in the way they pronunce vowels.
It just dawned on me while watching this video that my grandma, speaker of a thesprotian epirote dialect herself doesn't pronounce υ as /i/, she either cuts it off completely or it becomes a /y/. I always just kinda filtered that out, and I don't know why Notably her dialect also retains the unstressed aorist augment and the stressed η- one too, unlike standard modern greek. But yeah, as a sidenote, she pronounces mid-word η after σ as /y/, tho i have no idea where that came from.
im only a couple minutes in but your /e:/ sounds considerably higher to me than what i think of as the cardinal vowel (such as it is in spanish/french/italian etc), when im not focusing i even have a bit of trouble telling apart your /e/ and /i/
I wonder if there are many languages that share the pronunciation of Y with Polish, as a close-mid central unrounded vowel [ɨ̞], not to be confused with a close central unrounded vowel [ɨ]. I noticed that it's very difficult for Poles to pronounce Russian ы correctly. If I'm not mistaken, the Polish way of pronouncing Y is present in Northern Welsh, but only if the letter Y is in the final syllable. In non-final syllables it's pronounced as shwa.
Is there really good evidence for that the name of the letter was [hy:]? Or is it just an educated guess, based on the fact that υ at the beginning of a word always has the spiritus asper? (Then it could have been an exception.)
Is not for example the New Zealand pronunciation of English an extreme form of Iotacism? (Almost all vowels and diphthongs are pronounced as “ee”.) And if so, wouldn’t one expect the pronunciation of modern Greek versus Ancient Greek to differ to ones ear less than that of a New Zealanders English to an Englishman?
No, I’ve never seen any scholarly research to that effect. On the contrary, R more often causes an opening of the vowel in most languages, and occasionally velarization; this would resist a change from /y/ to /i/
@polyMATHY_Luke Ok, so serious question (since you ruined my childhood and now I can't speak ancient Greek because I pronounced it like modern Greek lol). How far back can a modern Greek understand or converse with someone speaking an older version of Greek? Would we go as far back as Byzantium or the Golden age? Thank you
Βαλτικές γλώσσες γενικά συνιστούμε ωραιότατο παράδειγμα της ινδοευρωπαϊκής συγγένειας, περιέχουνε πάρα πολλές λέξεις που είναι πολύ παρόμοια με τις σλαβικές γλώσσες καθώς και την ελληνική. Μάντεψε, τι θα πει λετονικό melns, plats και dantis χωρίς να τα ψάξεις;
It doesn't mean "simple Y" it means "tall Y" And Y isn't the same as u. You will never see taY But you will see Tau ΤαΥ doesn't exist. Ταυ does exist however and its Taf, not tau. This video is full of misinformation.
Interestingly enough, the latin letter "Y" in german is referred to as "Ypsilon" and is pronounced like the Umlaut "ü", thusly many latin and greek borrowed words that have a "y" in it that is pronounced "i" in most other european languages that borrowed it, gets pronounced with the sound equivalent to "ü" instead. (So we say prnounce the name "Lydia" "Lüdia" and not "Lidia" for example)
Ok first, this comment isn't for this video in specific, it's a comment to the channel. I don't mean to criticize or anything! I agree with the vast majority of your points across your videos, just as I agree with the arguments on this one. But... I just wish you would sometimes cite books written by people out of the Anglosphere. I don't mean just this video I mean overall. French, Spanish, Greek or even German writers. Not just American books, you know? Everytime I get a recommendation in your videos I get excited but it's always in English. It'd be fantastic to see *one* book that isn't some time. I'm not saying it's *wrong* to refer to American or British writers at all, I'm just saying that for topics related to Romance languages, Latin, and Greek I think there must be quite good literature from people native to these regions that are worth to recommend. Am I wrong to think that? If I ever see a book written originally in Spanish or Portuguese or Italian recommended in this channel I may just do backflips and cry out of excitement. Edit: i didn't mention Greek here because I'm not fluent in Greek :( Or maybe you already have some? If so please share! Please, please, please!
You must have missed where I cited Schwzyer (who was Swiss and wrote in German) here: ruclips.net/video/5lcIcYFveII/видео.html The is entire video is a summary of the historical grammar by Italian De Achille, whose book is in Italian: ruclips.net/video/J8QwK8Dorp0/видео.html Enjoy those backflips you promised you would do. I even reference Greek philologists from the 19th century in this very video. Teodorsson wasn’t a native English speaker either, but he wrote in English. Why? Why is all the scientific literature in English today? Because English is the international language. It’s the same reason Apuleius wrote in Latin and Lucian in Greek. All the major philological papers coming out from Italy and Greece are also in English. Thus all the majority of research is going to be in English. This is not a surprising outcome.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thanks for the long reply by the way. English is very essential in academia after all. I sometimes forget how much it is so sometimes, given that so many people in my country (including professors!) barely know English. Or now that I think about it, it may just be spoken English they struggle with. I can't imagine they read translated papers. I guess I could make a parallel to how some medieval scholars would do an awful spoken Latin but still be able to write fluently in it. I don't know, I'm not a scholar. Just very fascinated by this stuff. Have a nice day, Luke.
The French and long German one have the same quality, which is /y/, which is the prescribed model. It could have moved around though depending on the century or dialect.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thanks! By the way, the Latin course you reccomand "Lingua Latina per se illustrata" starting with "Imperium Romanum" and so on where one of the courses by "The Nature Method". My parents bought the company when the Danish owners died. As you can imagine, it was the English course that really made money, though. I still have some of the material in my possetion like parts of the Italian course. There was a complete Spanish course in the house of the Danish owners, but unfortunately they had called for all their belongings to be burnt and hadn't thought about making an exception for the Spnaish course. Later, my parents made the first parts of a new Spanish course, but it never reached the quality of the older ones. In my opinion the Latin version is actually the best one - there is so much creativity and logic and it feels so alive. This was all in the 1990-ies, but of course the original courses are several decades older.
What about the sound y like in polish lody ? Y is not a u nor an i sound ? We call y letter as igrek - because it comes from the Greek, as it went through the old Slavonic Christianisation :😊 The Welsh have got this also, the y sound like for example in ynys las, is the same sound. They say it comes from Latin :) . So confusing
The vowel may at one point have been the rounded version of the polish vowel, like /u/ in a Scottish accent, but this would have been before the Greek classical period. Later it was fully front and rounded, then in the Byzantine period it unrounded finally, so it was never pronounced like Polish y.
So if I'm correct, the pronunciation of the Ancient Greek letter upsilon is the same as the modern German Süss or French lune? Because I'm Dutch and we also have that German/French sound (e.g. 'duur'), but it sounds a bit different than the way you pronounce it, I think with your lips a bit more like a duck and less pressed together? I can't explain very well as I'm not well versed in linguistics, but Luke's u sounds a bit strange to my ear. Just a little bit though. It's very close and normally not noticeworthy, but since we're discussing the letter and the sound it makes, I wanted to ask.
I’m making the sound very clear for the video’s sake, more similar to French. The Dutch and German thing that’s probably throwing you off is that both have a lax version [ʏ] while I’m using exclusively the intense version [y]. Actual Ancient Greek might have been anywhere in that range.
Most languages with front rounded vowels pronounce them using compressed rounding, as opposed to protruded rounding typical of back vowels. Luke appears to mainly use protruded rounding for [y], which is pretty atypical but found in Swedish.
@@saddasish We actually brag a bit about having very "clean" vowels in Swedish, although I dislike the modern Swedish u, that is a result of the Great Vowel shift.
Just for information: Luke's [y] sounds just right to my Danish ears. Scandinavian does not have lax vowels, and Danish and Swedish [y] have protruded rounding, by the way (in central Swedish, the contrast between protruded and compressed rounding is actually the only difference between /y/ and /u/ which is phonetically a front vowel here).
@@polyMATHY_Luke Αν η αρχαία ελληνική που παράγεις ακούγεται σαν να προέρχεται από προτο Γερμανικές ρίζες. Τότε είναι λάθος. Οι λαοί της Μεσογείου έχουν κρατήσει έναν κοινό κώδικα στις γλώσσες τους. Και αυτό είναι πασιφανές. Επίσης κυλάει σωστά στην γλώσσα ενώ αυτα που διδάσκετε ΔΕΝ ακούγονται σαν να προέρχονται από την Μεσόγειο και ΔΕΝ κυλάνε στην γλώσσα. Με συγχωρείτε αλλά δεν έχετε δίκιο στα λεγόμενα σας. Οχι οταν παράγεται ήχους τελείως ξένους όχι μόνο σε εμάς τους Έλληνες αλλα και στους Ιταλούς και στους Ισπανούς. Κανείς από την Μεσόγειο δεν θα πει "ταου"... Το ταου ακούγεται σαν να προέρχεται απο την Ασία... Είναι τελείως invalid το επιχείρημα σας.
Thank you for providing more evidence that Y souns proto Germanic. And thus ancient Y couldn't have possibly sounded as the video describes. He is just misleading people into a false science. I really wonder if he had ever even come go Greece.
@@polyMATHY_Luke ok but what about words where Υ is in place of Ϝ? Is it pronounced the same there? And doesn't the change from αυ ευ to αβ/φ εβ/φ imply that Υ has a semivowel? Like aw or ew.
@@polyMATHY_LukeYou are simply wrong. You are producing a sound that's completely alien to Mediterranean languages, yet the "f" sound is everywhere to be found all around the Mediterranean... Italian, Spanish and Greek. So as a Greek, I bid you to seek much deeper than your books. They are just wrong. Think about it. Visit Greece, visit Italy, visit Spain. See the similarities. Now try to imagine any of them producing the au sound of tau. T is taf not tau.
"Ypsilon" means "I thin" ("psilon"= "thin" in neutral gender). How could it be pronounced as "OU"? Or vice-versa: why was this letter given such a misleading name?
Because what this video is saying is just WRONG information. Its a shame that not even the academics can get Greek right. Here they produce a sound that sounds absolutely alien to all Mediterranean languages, and yet, not a single second thought was ever given.
Let me elaborate. In the East Roman period, the pronunciations of οι and υ have merged, and if they hear the vowel υ, they couldn't differentiate if it was either οι or υ (a same thing happened to ε and αι as well) ‒ therefore the Romans added the ψιλόν onto the original vowels (ε, υ) to differentiate them from the former diphthongs (αι, οι) The merge of υ and ι happened centuries later from that.
the fact that you can write ιηυειοιυι in modern greek and read it as "iiiiii" is so funny to me edit: actually its probably more like "iiviii" according to the rules of υ
There was a joke among linguists about an ancient Greek phrase that would utilise all of those, and would sound just /iii/ with modern Greek pronunciation XD. I can't recall the phrase though...
"iiiiii" in most cases, "iiviii" or "iifiii" in some cases. υι is a rare one. All that sounded, pronounced as "i", but when writed ofcourse must be follows the grammatical rules. For example the word ειδήσεις = news cant be writed as for example υδισοις, is totally wrong. Also ι,η,υ,ει,οι read it as ι,η,υ,ει,οι. Sounded, pronounced as ι.
i just pronounced all of them(by saying the first letter of a word that starts with each) and observed my mouth taking different shape in all of them, even if they sound similar they are not just do the iii sound but have your mouth fixed on different shape οι, mouth had the shape of when we say "o" (but not with the french accent) ει, mouth had shape of when we say "e" as in enemy υ, the lower lip was out a bit υι as in master "yi" ι, mouth had shape as when we say "a" as in animal η, mouth was shaped as something between ει and ι
It's funny how in French we name the letter ''y'' literally ( i-grecque) But we pronounce like ''ee'' , or French ''i'' while our ''u'' letter sound like ''ü'' Like Greek ''y'' in those times ... but also like in English it is a consonant like yellow. Both vowel and consonant ... We are freak hahaha
Im sorry to say this. But this is just wrong. And my reasoning is very simple. It just sounds so amazingly ALIEN towards the REST of the sounds you would expect from any Mediterranean country. Its almost impossible to miss, that Spain, Italy and Greece, languages sound extremely close to each other. So how can it be the case that we have all of a sudden a letter that doesn't sound Mediterranean at all. But instead it sounds almost from Asian origin or proto Germanic / English origination? Tau was Taf. Not tau. Tau sounds so ABSOLUTELY alien to how Greek, Italian and Spanish sound, I don't know of many words in any of these languages, that actually produce the "au" "άου" sound of the "tau". While the "f" sound is EVERYWHERE to be found in both Greek, Spanish and Italian. So as a native Greek, I can tell you that not only Im not convinced. I feel attacked in a personal level from this misinformation. Im sorry but your studies are incomplete and sadly completely invalid.
Αυτό είναι λάθος. Εδώ μπορείς να ξεκινήσεις τις σπουδές σου: Vox Graeca, Η προφορά της ελληνικής την κλασική εποχή, by W. Sidney Allen (Modern Greek translation) ins.web.auth.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=690:vox-graeca-the-pronunciation-of-classical-greek&catid=93&Itemid=270&lang=en
Having a good read of the comments, I wonder if the search for "the truth" isn't somewhat obscured by differential evolution in time and place as I have observed in my lifetime in English. Initially, I grew up thinking, Southern/SE English was considered normal, then moving to Europe, BBC English reigned supreme. With Media becoming more international, US English crept in but was not welcomed. As the world shrunk, South African English was what foreigners wanted to learn as it was clearer (and probably had fewer dialects to confuse them). Now, everyone wants to be Californian (elsewhere) - but without the Spanish influence. So now RUclips is out little stateless country of dialects and is likely to roll us into a single dialect as more of our lives are online. What were the influences since 3000 years ago to make a single historically correct dialect of Greek?
These differences and changes are well attested, both regionally and chronologically. Everything that is knowable with the evidence we have, which is extensive, is something I explore on this channel.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Luke, I've followed you and admired your perspectives but seeing how languages evolve in my lifetime, I cannot say that anyone can track or attest anything well. The Cretan Greek dialect(s) for instance have influences that vary from village to village with Turkish, Venetian/Italian, WW2 Italian, French all thrown in to varying degrees and depend very much on the topic being discussed. The accents also vary as much as from a desire to belong as a desire to modernise - and this in a society that was literally shaped by outside Egyptian, Byzantine, Ottoman, Venetian and the Barbary coast pirates with pro and reactionary influences swaying development and regression...
@@christopherberry8519 Obviously we can't with certainty reconstruct every single dialect of every single village, but what we can do is track when changes appear and how they spread accross geography. You shouldn't conflate our inability to know the exact way a particular person in a particular village in a particular year spoke, with our ability to know how *most* people were pronouncing a certain sound accross time and space. I also think part of the issue is that a lot of this gets mystified, for instance you mention: *The Cretan Greek dialect(s) for instance have influences that vary from village to village with Turkish, Venetian/Italian, WW2 Italian, French all thrown in to varying degrees* But this isn't really true. Cretan Greek has loan words from various sources, but there's basically no evidence of systemic changes in things like phonology from any of these sources. Laymen have a tendency to attribute language change to foreign influence far too often, because it's the most intuitive form of linguistic shift, but the reality is that most changes are internal and accumulate generation by generation with no external influence required. To give you an analogy for this whole thing, imagine you told someone that computers were first created in the 20th century, and their response was "well we have no idea what was going on in random villages all over the world 2,000 years ago, so how do you know they didn't all have computers already?"
@@Philoglossos Some good points that you raise, certainly. I think you may be a little hasty with your analogy though. Certainly, we have no record of electrified or mechanical computers for other places but for language and words, we have their development and etymologies. The absence or a record logically doesn't count as evidence of it's prior existence - one would expect a burden of proof commensurate with the claim. Tails and dogs come to mind when looking at linguistics - especially in Greece which is always trying to drive with eyes stuck firmly to the mirror. I guess I'd have to explain. Creating an average "Greek" that will always be different to any spoken or written Greek is defining the language to suit the population group and not the other way round. We have many examples of languages that are "distinct" but understandable by both populations across Europe and whether we call them a language or a dialect is a matter of Politics and it's propaganda arm, History rolled into the same sleeping bag. Calabrian, Cypriot and Albanian "dialects" among others are more or less intelligible - some less than Dutch is to Germans - or should I throw Luxembourgish into the mix? Crete joined Greece in 1912 but I'd argue that if the Ottoman plan for Crete had worked, it could have had the same fate as former Greek speaking areas in Anatolia. I guess this is where my frustration lies - with the victors re-writing ancient history to forge a Nationalistic narrative with the truth often being whatever the victors could pay "Historians" and the Learned propagandists to write - often the price being their own lives. It's easy to overlook that when livelihoods and one's life is in the balance, allegiances, religions and culture all become more fluid in the sands of time. Death, oppression and "population relocation" are all part of cultural and political cleansing which no individual can withstand. Similarly, forcing populations, places and people into linguistic categories looses sight of the fact that these categories are generalizations and that there are fuzzy edges to these categories leaving a spectrum of truth being pulled back and forth by central influences with the passing of time and even these generalisations become torn, separated or stretched as populations evolve - or as with what is happening with the Internet, re-merging to some degree. Fascinating.
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I was actually in Greece recently, I have a question. How has the Greek language stayed relatively the same, at least when compared with other modern languages when compared with their ancient counterparts? Even the alphabet is the same!
@@DesignerShark44 That's a great question, which I intend to answer in a future video.
@@polyMATHY_Luke
Hi, great channel, I subscribe since the start.
There is this sound of ancient Y in modern french and modern German, in french it's "u" like in : deja vu, in German it's: "ü", the exactly same sound.
These are the only 2 living languages with this particular sound.
My theory is that in Messalía, modern Marseille , where ancient Greek has been spoken since the start, french got developed because of Caesar, imposing Latin as an official administrative language, but people spoke there latin with ancient Greek pronunciation so: french got born....
Modern Greek on the contrary is like ancient Greek with latin pronunciation and turk pronunciation later on.😅
You can see it especially with the sound R...😂
So, good luck for the future ❤
Fan fact: the German: über is the Greek : υπέρ 😂😂
@@polyMATHY_Lukecan you watch this clip of Socrates trial in Ancient Greek and let me know if the pronunciation is
Correct 👍🏽please
There are still some Greeks around the Peloponnese and Attica that pronounce certain words with upsilon as if it were /u/. The example of Ζήκος from the old Greek movie «ο Μπακαλόγατος» comes to my mind, where he says "ξουρίζω" instead of "ξυρίζω" -if I recall the scene correctly.
Oh yes, that’s true! I hadn’t thought of that before.
Yes indeed, there's also "κρούσταλλο" instead of κρύσταλλο and so on.
Also the "iotacization" of the "etas" was not universal either, in some cases it just became an epsilon, hence why today we have εμεις from ημεις, αστέρας/αστέρι from αστηρ or σίδερο from σίδηρος, at least in demotic/standard modern Greek.
@@ntonisa6636 Count also the πλερώνω, which μάγκες used to say instead of πληρώνω
Μερικά παραδείγματα αυτής της διασώσης είναι πανελλήνια, όπως το μυσταξ -> μουστάκι, μα τα πιο χαρακτηριστικά, νομίζω, υπάρχουνε στα τσακώνικα (κύων -> κούε).
Πρέπει να θυμάμαι όμως ότι σε μερικές περιπτώσεις (πριν από πι και κάππα) δεν πρόκειται για αρχαισμό αλλά για μεταγενέστερη τροπή i < u, όπως παρατηρούμε λογου χάρη στο σηπία -> σουπιά και στο λαϊκό λήμμα τρύπα -> τρούπα
4:03 In Georgian Y from Greek words borrowed in middle ages are transformed into vi sound. so for example Cyprus in Georgian is კვიპროსი /kviprosi/ in the past we were using single letter ჳ which corresponded to Greek Y so we would Write კჳპროსი.
Interesting!
So Gregorian uses v-prothesis, how interesting! Do you know whether this only concerns Greek Y or also other sounds (previously /u/?) in Modern Gregorian?
The v-prothesis isn't that uncommon in other Indo-European languages or dialects, i.e. in Central-Slavic dialects - Belarusian, Slovak, Ukranian 'pavuk' or Czech 'pavouk' (spider) from Proto-Slavic *pàǭkъ (via an intermediate form /pauk/).
@@Srga91 I think no. I think we just didn't have a sound which corresponded to y sound(Close front rounded vowel) so we replaced it with /vi/. also we were writing /u/ sound with two letters ოჳ like greek oy. but later these two letters merged into one letter უ.
@@nugzarmikeladze Thanks for the explanation 👍
The /u/ used to be written the same way in Old Church Slavonic as well, first as оу, then later reduced to у.
Would you be so kind and also answer the following question? What about /u/ and /i/ in syllable-initial position? Are there any irregularities in writing or is it always a simple /u/ and /i/-sound?
@@Srga91 in Georgian Spelling each letter represents one spoken sound. Georgian doesn't have that kind of irregularities.
A little extra piece of information: Romanian 'jur' meaning "vicinity" can only come from a provincial Latin *gjurus which is of course from Greek gýros. Apparently the */ju/ represents a third way to try to deal with the /y/.
That's also the way French /y/ was borrowed into English; for instance French "fume", "tube", "ubiquité", "pur", "musée", English "fume", "tube", "ubiquity", "pure", "museum", etc. Note that a lot of these have lost the initial /j/ in american english though.
@@ryalloric1088 That's also how Japanese deal with the /y/ sound when transcribing foreign words; they use their ユ's ("yu"'s)
Don't know if it is a new way ir a development of the Latin pronunciation
@@leonxydias893 Well, it is the Latin pronunciation itself that is a 'third way' because Romans who were not proficient in saying [y] would normally go with either [i] or [u] but have here opted for both.
Many italians to this day, even in academia, are adamant that upsilon was pronounced ju
There are many points Luke makes here about the evolution of the pronunciation of a language separate from it's written form, which I've internally been aware of, but the way he phrases it and puts it into words is so nice to hear. I think more people who speak modern languages should be aware of this fact and recognize that in the sometimes confusing spelling of words, especially modern English!
That’s very kind of you to say
This is amazing. In some areas of Greece we still use sounds and phonetics as used in ancient Greece in certain words. It is amazing how this language still exists to this day and we have people like you diving deep into this. Greetings and love from Greece.
Also I have never heard in Greece the name Πύρρος pronounced with a straight /i/ sound more than /u/ sound. Saying it with a straight /i/ sound will be heard as strange. It has a more barytone pronounciation rather than a high pitch pronounciation. Same with other words that incloude υ.
/y/ to /i/, /u/ to /y/ and /y/ to /u/ seem to be extrememly common sound shifts.
Afaik /y/ to /u/ is actually exceedingly rare
/y/ to /i/ is the most common probably.
It happened in Welsh too, where the letter "u" itself is even read as /i/ (or still as /y/ in some regions).
In English it was /u:/ > /y/ and then /i/. Well actually /ai/ because of the Great Vowel Shift.
Well /y/ was in Old English commonly used for plural nouns like mys being plural of mus.
Great video, very well explained! You also dived a bit into the modern varieties which is great!
In German we still use the ü sound with words that have a y and came from the Greek. However, I can only think of Xylophon which if spelled as pronounced would be Ksülofon 😊
Physik, Gymnasium, Rhythmus
Mythos, System, Lyrik, Hymne, Nymphe,...
Psychologer
Hypothese
Typisch!!
Fascinating! Thanks for this wonderfully put together video. It’s so interesting that this vowel has undergone all these varying changes, sometimes going back to previous pronunciation, and sometimes being preserved in modern dialects.
I’m not as educated as I’d like to be in modern Greek (of any dialect), even though I come from a diaspora family, so I’m really happy and grateful to see Greeks in the comments who are giving modern examples that speak to what you are showing in this video. It’s stuff I would probably never have heard in my community here in Canada, and it’s so lovely to see how your videos draw in such interesting info to add to what you present.
Thank you!
Thanks for the thoughtful comment!
English /y/ was unrounded to/i/ around the same time as byzantine /y/. In "foreign" words and names with original Latin y or Greek upsilon the "y" spelling is retained, but in native words "y" became obsolete for a while, until it replaced final "i" and initial ȝ.
Loved how you used Πύρρος as an example. Very interesting video! Hopefully people can look him up. As a hint, he's a relative of Alexander the Great!
Many examples of modern Greek where the Υ is pronounced as u, especially in dialects and informal speach , τuμπανο, μuστακι, ξuραφι, τρuπα etc etc. In Cypriot Greek the say εσu instead of εσύ and if I scratch my memory more I could think of many more examples
μούττη in Cypriot Greek
In demotic greek (the people's greek language) there are a couple of words that are still pronounced with the /y/ sound:
- κυρία /ky'ria/
- προκοίλι /pro'kyli/
Also, in many words of demotic greek the /y/ sound is replaced by a /u/ sound. For example:
- Κουμιώτης (man from Kyme) instead of Κυμιώτης
- Κρουστάλλω (given name deriving from the greek word for crystal) instead of Κρυστάλλω
- τρούπα (hole) instead of τρύπα
- κουτί (box) instead of κυτίον
- τούμπανο (drum) instead of τύμπανο
- σούρνω (to drag) instead of σύρω
- στουπί (kind of oakum for barrels, bottles etc.) instead of στυππίον
etc.
Also, there were until recently certain modern greek dialects (like Old Athenian, Kymiot, Maniot, Megarean etc.) which had still the /y/ sound.
I think that traces of the /y/ pronunciation of υ can be heard even today in Greece for example in the pronunciation of the word γύφτος (gypsy) which is sometimes jokingly pronounced as γιούφτος.
I thought it was just a joke but it might be true.. My grandfather used to call me like that every time he saw me. the most memorable thing I remember from him 😕
Omg true, I never thought about this before.
As well as, in some other cases it seems to have retreated back to /u/ as in κυτίον-> κουτί (box).
thank you for this video! your content is insanely good and i recommend it to basically anyone who's starting to get interested in anything language-related
this video was so interesting i watched it while having lunch as if it were an action movie about Υυ
the revert back to [u] felt like a plot twist
Thanks so much! I’m really glad you like the videos. More coming soon; I plan to do one a month on Greek phonology until I finish the alphabet
Hey Luke, grate video as always! I don't know if anybody pointed it out yet but in Italy many philosophy and latin/greek teachers when rendering ancient greek 'Y' turn it into 'IU', for example 'ὕβρις' becomes 'iubris' or 'fiusis' for 'φύσις'.
very interesting as always
Well, as a Greek myself, I can say that upsilon's pronunciation in Ancient Greek is one of the only things that Erasmus got right. Because even today, upsilon in many words (τούμπανο ή τύμπανο, ξουράφι ή ξυράφι, κρούσταλλο ή κρύσταλλο, τρούπα ή τρύπα, μύστακι ή μουστάκι, σκύζω ή σκούζω etc). There are many examples of upsilon still pronounced in their original form, just under the appearance of the dipthong ου. Plus, in the lone upsilon in many Greek words, at times you can hear a slight ü sound, especially if before the upsilon there's the consonant Σ (Συρία for example).
My favourite usage of the letter Y is in the Bernese dialect of Swiss German. They distinguish between a closed frontal vowel like in the second syllable of "happy", and a near-closed frontal vowel like in "kit". The former is written with Y, and the latter with I.
Interesting! Don't other Swiss German dialects use y for [i:]?
I think you'll be happy to know that Poles do the same thing you are talking about, which I'm not sure Barnese or Swiss dialect use (almost the same - our 'i' is monophthongized "happy" or "fleece" while 'y' resembles "kit" vowel)
I can't believe you shoot this video in Centocelle, literally metres from my home! 😍 And I'm glad you didn't point to the "e" in "femily" as an error, because it's actually a wordplay... Great video, as always, Luke!
Ciao Tiziano! Sono contento se ti piace il video. Rispetto a Femily, è un gioco di parola in che senso? Io l’avevo capito solo come la pronuncia solita italiana.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Non sono sicurissimo e spero di aver interpretato bene. Pensavo che fosse un errore, finché un giorno sono entrato e ho notato appeso alla parete un quadretto con le foto di tutti i membri della famiglia e i loro nomi, e tra loro la più piccola, una bimba dal nome di Emily... Così ho capito che "femily" poteva essere un gioco su "Emily's family"... Non ho chiesto conferma però. E la foto è di tanti anni fa (quando aprirono la pizzeria, credo), perciò Emily ora potrebbe essere grande...
Mi sembra probabile! Grazie
@@polyMATHY_Luke Grazie a te! p.s.: se sei ancora a Centocelle, mi piacerebbe provare a parlare un po' di latino se ti va
Very interesting!
So whether we pronounce y as i or ü in ancient Greek words, it's not necessarily because most of them came through Latin (or through English), but because they were also pronounced differently in Greek throughout the ages.
And I'm saying this as we natively have both i and ü but still have „inconsistent" pronounciation when it comes to Greek words. We pronounce Hyperion as Hüperión, but hyperbola is hiperbola. Btw. we also have phonemic length in vowels, so both í and ű exist separately, they are not just stressed forms marked with an umlaut like in German, where they really say űber, not über - or schőn, not schön etc. But I'm digressing too much.
Don't get me wrong, but I love that fact how Luke always pronounces everything correctly. The pronounciation of ü and ű is perfect, and even ö and ő [IPA ø and ø:] are very good. Having said that, my classical Latin pronounciation is "getting there", my ancient Greek is still "nowhere near". :D
Fan fact: part of the refugees that came to Greece from Asia Minor, at 1922, (prob those that were living in rural parts), were pronouncing the "υ" as "ου", and were being mocked by the mainland Greeks who were calling them "οί αουτοί" (because the word "αυτός"-pronounced "αουτός" by the refugees, was obviously in the most frequent use).
That’s an amazing anecdote! Could you email me with the source?
ScorpioMartianus @ gmail
5:40 in ... those hilltop villages look spectacular. Anyone any idea where they are?
Meteora, and they are monasteries not villages.
As far as I know the southern dorian dialects never experienced that original shift from /u/ to /y/ as much as Attic and Ionic. Which is why Tsakonian especially might have retained the /u/ in place of υ to that degree (except ofc. for words descending from later Koiné).
But they've even retained an evolved digamma in a few words; «κουβάνε» from «*κυϝάνεος» probably (modern Greek κυανός/"cyan").
And βάννε (lamb), βαννούλι (little lamb) from Doric ϝαρήν > Classical/Attic Greek ἀρήν
I have been wanting to learn the Doric and Tsakonian Greek dialects but there is not much information about them unfortunately.
Great video as always! Here's an interesting fact: old typographers used to maintain the separate glyph ὔ which is used solely on one single word: the word ὔψιλον itself! Gorgeously kinky müstache by the way :)
In north California accent (San Francisco Bay Area), there’s a sound change from u to iu or y, especially among young people. It’s written in some research papers. I also hear my son pronouncing it like this. “Move” sounds like [mjuv] or [myv]. My native language distinguishes [u] and [y] so it’s pretty annoying to me.
Indeed!
Don't even get me started on this.
In British English, the long "oo" in words like moon, move, shoe, you etc. can sound completely different depending on which region you are from. Some even diphthongise it.
A TV advert stirred up the pot a decade ago, some people said it was taking the p*ss out of regional accents. But it was absolutely funny! Just search for "anything for yow".
It can be a gang related changes, but changes nevertheless ")
All long U-s in English are slightly fronted anyway.
This is very noticeable with RUclipsr Scott Manley, who talks about [by:stəs] and flying to the [my:n]. He does live in California, but he's originally from Scotland, and I've always assumed that it's a Scottish accent.
The /u(:)/ to /y(:)/ to /i(:)/ and the /o:/ to /u:/ shifts also happen in the central and southeastern Yiddish dialects.
The shifts of /u/ to /y/ and /o/ to /u/ happened to some romance languages, such as Occitan, Romansch, and French.
Thanks for posting Luke👍
I'm so impressed by all the thoughtful comments here -- I find the photography too beautiful and distracting to pay attention to what he's saying. . .
Awesome video, thanks Luke! Loving the facial hair.
Velim optimōs imitārī! 🧔♂️
There is definitely a potential there to grow it out like an ancient Greek philosopher! 😄 👍
Excellent analysis! Thank you!
Hello Luke!
There is possible evidence that the distinction survived in Constantinople until the 14th century. The Arab traveler Ibn Battuta visited Constantinople around the year 1332 and writes:
"Our entry into Constantinople the Great was made about noon or a little later, and they rang their bells until the very skies shook with the mingling of their sounds. When we reached the fist gate of the king's palace we found there about a hundred men, with an officer on a platform, and I heard them saying "Sarakinu, Sarakinu," ["Saracen, Saracen"] which means Muslims."
Presumably they were saying, "Σαρακηνοί." Since οι and υ had merged centuries before, and Arabic does not possess the frontal υ, it is reasonable to assume that the sound he was hearing was closer to the Arabic u than to i, indicating a probable survival of the frontal υ, at least in the imperial court.
I love your channel! Apologies for the late comment, and keep up the good work!
That’s an amazing find! I’ve saved it to my pronunciation notes and files. This is very valuable. Thanks very much! Ὑγίαινε.
Hi! Where did you find this information? Did you actually read the Arabic original?
Cool video. Check out Biblia del Oso: they spell “hierba” or “herb” as “yerua”.
I'll be calling your channel Polümaþü from now on
True pronounciation lol
That's great!!!
Very interesting stuff, Luke! A wonderful, informative watch as always! 🇬🇷🏛️
Also I got accepted to my Linguistics MA 👀🎉
Congratulations!
In cypriot greek we still pronounce certain words with υ, inherited directly from ancient and /or medieval greek with /u/instead of /i/.Examples are
ξουριζω, xurizo instead of ξυριζω, xirizo,I shave
γρουσος ,ghrousos instead of χρυσος chrisos,gold
μουγια ,muya instead of μυγαmiga,fly
μουττη ,mutte instead of μυτη ,mite ,nose.
5:19 Wait, really? I was under the impression that the monophthong in "down" was a retention from Middle English /du:n/ and that Modern Scots /y/ in /myn/ comes from Northern Middle English /ø:/ in /mø:n/. Simon Roper has a video on the Great Vowel Shift in Northern England which says that's what happened there, so I'd be surprised if Scots differs from Northern British English in this regard.
Retracted. Thanks. I was working on old research.
@@polyMATHY_Luke oh so that's what that one frame of Scots IPA was, I didn't know one could do video editing on RUclips itself
Once upon a time in America, an ancient Greek play was performance using Greek actors. This brought on some debate. The Greeks refused to say their lines in what the universities claimed to be ancient Greek. Instead the actors used their modern native tongue.
Was there a divide on υ pronounciation between educated and non-educated speekers in the Late Byzantine era? Because I remember reading this somewhere...
Great question! I don’t know, but let me know if you find out.
@@polyMATHY_Luke I've found where I had found it. It's in the Wikipedia page for Medieval Greek, in the section of Phonology. It talks about some other evidence for the distinct sound of οι/υ and also talks about the distinction being made "at least in educated speech" because of course we focus mostly on the formal and written form of Byzantine Greek. It also mentions that there is clear evidence for the existence of the distiction until at least the early 11th century because Micheal the Grammarian was making fun of a bishop for their confusion and also Georgian transliterations keep distinguishing οι/υ from the others until around that time(10th century). (So there is a possibility that in some non-mainstream/non-formal dialects it wasn't distinguished that long or as you mentioned it was distinguished for a lot more time or it became /u/ again. It's more complex in regards to dialects of course but not any real evidence for an distinction in regards to education(in the same dialects) before the confusion had already started happening, the grammarian and the bishop)
I have only recently found this channel, and after looking at a few of your videos, I am curious to know if you have ever listened to the liturgy of the Greek Orthodox church.
Often
@@polyMATHY_Luke Awesome! I grew up with Greek and English and enjoy passing on information about the language and all of its forms. Some channels are cringe in how they pronounce just the alphabet. I appreciate your videos and what the general public can learn from them. H γιαγιά μου είναι Ελληνίδα ( Γαστούνη Ηλείας).
7:35 why do the P and K become voiced in Latin? Why do we say "government" and not "covernment"?
The most likely explanation is that they were closer to Old Latin g in the non-Attic Greek dialect they came into contact with Latin.
Thanks for sharing
Thanks for your video! My question is, would the halfway u-i pronunciation of υ in Attic also apply to diphthongs such as αυ ωυ ηυ and ευ? From what I gather from your research ου would be pronounced as a regular u perhaps a long sound. But what about the rest of the diphthongs with υ?
Amābō tē, potesne videōnem ("a video"?) dē sonō mediō facere? Grātiās tibi agō!
Optimum cōnsilium. Tālem pelliculam faciam.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Euhoe!
Interesting how many languages use the letter y yet use it to represent entirely different sounds than [y]. Then there are languages that have the sound but use a different letter to represent it. In Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish the letter y is still used to represent the same [y] sound as it does in classical Latin (and originates from ancient Greek), but I wonder if they are the only ones.
Danish and Albanian also use Y for /y/. Faroese does it occasionally in some loanwords, from my understanding.
What would be the difference in pronounciation between the short and the long /y/ vowel in Classical Greek?
Only length: ruclips.net/video/dQBpwKWnZAo/видео.htmlsi=iIh6hFyck3vWJaPW
I think y as consonant was used in English because it looked like g, so it replaced the soft g in words like yard (Old English geard).
Interesting. In Danish it is still pronounced this way. And in Cyrillic y stands for "oo" sound, basically letter u. Also in my language of Lithuanian y is the long "ee" sound while i is pronounced as short and crisp, well "i" like in 'bit', not i in 'Iceland' (sorry, I do not remember international phonetic alphabet)
I think the Cyrillic у comes from the diagraph Ȣ of ΟΥ (which makes the u sound in modern greek) .
Y in Welsh 🏴 is usually pronounced as the schwa or, depending on context as a soft i. It's an imortant word in Welsh as y (by itself) is the definate article (the) which is pronounced as the schwa.
The y in the video sounds like u pronounced on Welsh.
12:33 in Cyprus we call σκύλος, dog, as "shillos"
σκ is /ʃ/ in Cypriot Greek? That's just like Old English! English's native /ʃ/ comes from Proto-Germanic /sk/.
Yup! And like Italian. The difference with Greek and Italian is they palatalized before front vowels.
@@polyMATHY_Luke It seems that the accent shifted after the 3rd Crusade, when our island came under the French and a few centuries later under the Venetians, I'm not sure though. I've read in Leontios Machairas chronicle (14th-15th century) that the "sh" sound was already apparent
As someone learning modern Greek, Cypriot Greek is really damn weird
@@LNTutorialsNL Isolated elements of ancient Green grammar and syntax that Standard Modern Greek lacks, mix of primordial Greek (even Mycenean) words, along with Koine, Old French, Occitan, Venetian, Turkish and a bit of English. Not counting accent. Nevertheless we are easily understood by Cretans and especially Dodecanesians
What the hell, you were 50m away from my house 😅
Well you do live in one of the most famous cities in history
@@servantofaeie1569 yeah but it's huge, and it's not even in the center, I don't know what he's doing there ahaha
He's literally next to a gym
Hi, Luke! Where are you at the end pf the video?
In Rome
In spelling, these shifts seem big and it’s very interesting and important to study them, but in reality the differences acoustically must me small. I mean a english speaker from Boston can be mostly understood by a Southerner even though there are huge differences in the way they pronunce vowels.
So the same process in which hard sounds of k became soft c happened also in greek and not only latin?
That’s right! Not in Standard Modern Greek, but in other dialects like Tsakonian and Cypriot yes.
@@polyMATHY_Luke cool
I think υ is still pronounced differently than ι in some words, such as πυρ
Not in πυρ but in other words yes.
It just dawned on me while watching this video that my grandma, speaker of a thesprotian epirote dialect herself doesn't pronounce υ as /i/, she either cuts it off completely or it becomes a /y/. I always just kinda filtered that out, and I don't know why
Notably her dialect also retains the unstressed aorist augment and the stressed η- one too, unlike standard modern greek.
But yeah, as a sidenote, she pronounces mid-word η after σ as /y/, tho i have no idea where that came from.
Very cool
im only a couple minutes in but your /e:/ sounds considerably higher to me than what i think of as the cardinal vowel (such as it is in spanish/french/italian etc), when im not focusing i even have a bit of trouble telling apart your /e/ and /i/
I wonder if there are many languages that share the pronunciation of Y with Polish, as a close-mid central unrounded vowel [ɨ̞], not to be confused with a close central unrounded vowel [ɨ]. I noticed that it's very difficult for Poles to pronounce Russian ы correctly. If I'm not mistaken, the Polish way of pronouncing Y is present in Northern Welsh, but only if the letter Y is in the final syllable. In non-final syllables it's pronounced as shwa.
Is there really good evidence for that the name of the letter was [hy:]? Or is it just an educated guess, based on the fact that υ at the beginning of a word always has the spiritus asper? (Then it could have been an exception.)
I think it might have been without the h. Allen shows there even were some exceptions for the aspiration of rho in the beginning of words
Dionysius the Thrax mentions it. Probably ΗΥ is written in Ancient texts too (Η denoting h)
As a froeigner kid I was confused what upsilon did pronounced in classical greek is it sound u or iyuuu ??
Is not for example the New Zealand pronunciation of English an extreme form of Iotacism? (Almost all vowels and diphthongs are pronounced as “ee”.) And if so, wouldn’t one expect the pronunciation of modern Greek versus Ancient Greek to differ to ones ear less than that of a New Zealanders English to an Englishman?
Hey, is there any truth that y in front of rota was mostly pronounced like ee? For example Pyrros or Lyra
No, I’ve never seen any scholarly research to that effect. On the contrary, R more often causes an opening of the vowel in most languages, and occasionally velarization; this would resist a change from /y/ to /i/
thank you @@polyMATHY_Luke
@@Zora3yYes it is true. Don't listen to him, he doesn't seem to know what he is talking about.
Can anyone explain exactly why upsilon makes a v or f sound after certain vowels?
Here you go ruclips.net/video/5lcIcYFveII/видео.html
@polyMATHY_Luke Ok, so serious question (since you ruined my childhood and now I can't speak ancient Greek because I pronounced it like modern Greek lol). How far back can a modern Greek understand or converse with someone speaking an older version of Greek? Would we go as far back as Byzantium or the Golden age? Thank you
Probably the Byzantine era, since Byzantine Greek already sounds more like modern Greek than Ancient Greek.
Also related is the fact that the word πλατύς is platùs in lithuanian.
Βαλτικές γλώσσες γενικά συνιστούμε ωραιότατο παράδειγμα της ινδοευρωπαϊκής συγγένειας, περιέχουνε πάρα πολλές λέξεις που είναι πολύ παρόμοια με τις σλαβικές γλώσσες καθώς και την ελληνική. Μάντεψε, τι θα πει λετονικό melns, plats και dantis χωρίς να τα ψάξεις;
Thanks to you, now I keep thinking "Pizza femilü"
We still have the ou sound when we put the letters Ου together.
Oh my god... just now I understood that the letter Y which we also have in the German alphabet literally means "simple u" :D omg after 42 years....
It doesn't mean "simple Y" it means "tall Y"
And Y isn't the same as u.
You will never see taY
But you will see Tau
ΤαΥ doesn't exist.
Ταυ does exist however and its Taf, not tau.
This video is full of misinformation.
@@-_Nuke_- difficult to express, what I mean. Otherwise it would be clear ro everyone.
It's impressive how they pronounce it today.
I know it's off the topic but could "pizza' have come from "pitta'" in greek?
Hmm could have been possible but I don't think "pitta" is of Greek origin.
en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/pizza
Interestingly enough, the latin letter "Y" in german is referred to as "Ypsilon" and is pronounced like the Umlaut "ü", thusly many latin and greek borrowed words that have a "y" in it that is pronounced "i" in most other european languages that borrowed it, gets pronounced with the sound equivalent to "ü" instead. (So we say prnounce the name "Lydia" "Lüdia" and not "Lidia" for example)
Rare German W
Ok first, this comment isn't for this video in specific, it's a comment to the channel. I don't mean to criticize or anything! I agree with the vast majority of your points across your videos, just as I agree with the arguments on this one.
But... I just wish you would sometimes cite books written by people out of the Anglosphere. I don't mean just this video I mean overall. French, Spanish, Greek or even German writers. Not just American books, you know?
Everytime I get a recommendation in your videos I get excited but it's always in English. It'd be fantastic to see *one* book that isn't some time.
I'm not saying it's *wrong* to refer to American or British writers at all, I'm just saying that for topics related to Romance languages, Latin, and Greek I think there must be quite good literature from people native to these regions that are worth to recommend. Am I wrong to think that?
If I ever see a book written originally in Spanish or Portuguese or Italian recommended in this channel I may just do backflips and cry out of excitement.
Edit: i didn't mention Greek here because I'm not fluent in Greek :(
Or maybe you already have some? If so please share! Please, please, please!
You must have missed where I cited Schwzyer (who was Swiss and wrote in German) here: ruclips.net/video/5lcIcYFveII/видео.html
The is entire video is a summary of the historical grammar by Italian De Achille, whose book is in Italian: ruclips.net/video/J8QwK8Dorp0/видео.html
Enjoy those backflips you promised you would do.
I even reference Greek philologists from the 19th century in this very video.
Teodorsson wasn’t a native English speaker either, but he wrote in English. Why? Why is all the scientific literature in English today? Because English is the international language. It’s the same reason Apuleius wrote in Latin and Lucian in Greek. All the major philological papers coming out from Italy and Greece are also in English. Thus all the majority of research is going to be in English.
This is not a surprising outcome.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you! Im backflipping as I type :)
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thanks for the long reply by the way.
English is very essential in academia after all. I sometimes forget how much it is so sometimes, given that so many people in my country (including professors!) barely know English.
Or now that I think about it, it may just be spoken English they struggle with. I can't imagine they read translated papers. I guess I could make a parallel to how some medieval scholars would do an awful spoken Latin but still be able to write fluently in it.
I don't know, I'm not a scholar. Just very fascinated by this stuff.
Have a nice day, Luke.
So, was it like our Swedish Y or more like the Finnish one? The German variant is very different. There is also the French pronounciaton.
The French and long German one have the same quality, which is /y/, which is the prescribed model. It could have moved around though depending on the century or dialect.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thanks! By the way, the Latin course you reccomand "Lingua Latina per se illustrata" starting with "Imperium Romanum" and so on where one of the courses by "The Nature Method". My parents bought the company when the Danish owners died. As you can imagine, it was the English course that really made money, though. I still have some of the material in my possetion like parts of the Italian course.
There was a complete Spanish course in the house of the Danish owners, but unfortunately they had called for all their belongings to be burnt and hadn't thought about making an exception for the Spnaish course. Later, my parents made the first parts of a new Spanish course, but it never reached the quality of the older ones. In my opinion the Latin version is actually the best one - there is so much creativity and logic and it feels so alive. This was all in the 1990-ies, but of course the original courses are several decades older.
That’s remarkable! I’d like to talk with you about this further. Could you send me an email at ScorpioMartianus @ gmail ?
Reminds me of how we greeks replace υ with ιού. Like γιούφτος/γύφτος or πλατύ/πλατιού.
Ενδιαφέρον!!!
This is believed to be the last letter to change to /i/.
I agree
That "femily" tho
What about the sound y like in polish lody ? Y is not a u nor an i sound ? We call y letter as igrek - because it comes from the Greek, as it went through the old Slavonic Christianisation :😊
The Welsh have got this also, the y sound like for example in ynys las, is the same sound. They say it comes from Latin :) . So confusing
The vowel may at one point have been the rounded version of the polish vowel, like /u/ in a Scottish accent, but this would have been before the Greek classical period. Later it was fully front and rounded, then in the Byzantine period it unrounded finally, so it was never pronounced like Polish y.
Cool.
Grātiās quod spectāstī, amīce.
So if I'm correct, the pronunciation of the Ancient Greek letter upsilon is the same as the modern German Süss or French lune? Because I'm Dutch and we also have that German/French sound (e.g. 'duur'), but it sounds a bit different than the way you pronounce it, I think with your lips a bit more like a duck and less pressed together? I can't explain very well as I'm not well versed in linguistics, but Luke's u sounds a bit strange to my ear. Just a little bit though. It's very close and normally not noticeworthy, but since we're discussing the letter and the sound it makes, I wanted to ask.
I’m making the sound very clear for the video’s sake, more similar to French. The Dutch and German thing that’s probably throwing you off is that both have a lax version [ʏ] while I’m using exclusively the intense version [y]. Actual Ancient Greek might have been anywhere in that range.
Modern Swedish still has the "intense" version. The French u and German ü are (usually) somewhere between modern Swedish u and modern Swedish y.
Most languages with front rounded vowels pronounce them using compressed rounding, as opposed to protruded rounding typical of back vowels. Luke appears to mainly use protruded rounding for [y], which is pretty atypical but found in Swedish.
@@saddasish We actually brag a bit about having very "clean" vowels in Swedish, although I dislike the modern Swedish u, that is a result of the Great Vowel shift.
Just for information: Luke's [y] sounds just right to my Danish ears. Scandinavian does not have lax vowels, and Danish and Swedish [y] have protruded rounding, by the way (in central Swedish, the contrast between protruded and compressed rounding is actually the only difference between /y/ and /u/ which is phonetically a front vowel here).
Native speaker here. You really must learn to pronounce theta correctly. Same with OI in KOIN-. The O i silent.
Όχι. Είσαι μητρικός ομιλητής της Νέας Ελληνικής, όχι της Αρχαίας Ελληνικής. Μάθε περισσότερα εδώ: ruclips.net/video/dQBpwKWnZAo/видео.html
@@polyMATHY_Luke Αν η αρχαία ελληνική που παράγεις ακούγεται σαν να προέρχεται από προτο Γερμανικές ρίζες. Τότε είναι λάθος.
Οι λαοί της Μεσογείου έχουν κρατήσει έναν κοινό κώδικα στις γλώσσες τους. Και αυτό είναι πασιφανές. Επίσης κυλάει σωστά στην γλώσσα ενώ αυτα που διδάσκετε ΔΕΝ ακούγονται σαν να προέρχονται από την Μεσόγειο και ΔΕΝ κυλάνε στην γλώσσα.
Με συγχωρείτε αλλά δεν έχετε δίκιο στα λεγόμενα σας. Οχι οταν παράγεται ήχους τελείως ξένους όχι μόνο σε εμάς τους Έλληνες αλλα και στους Ιταλούς και στους Ισπανούς.
Κανείς από την Μεσόγειο δεν θα πει "ταου"... Το ταου ακούγεται σαν να προέρχεται απο την Ασία... Είναι τελείως invalid το επιχείρημα σας.
καλος!
Καλός ή κάλος; 😀 Καλώς τον! Ποιον; Τον κάλο!
If you find this complicated, let me introduce you to the Dutch Y!
So soft and easy to pronounce vowels, compared to how the Y is pronounced in Swedish at least...
Indeed
y/i & like illi / ylli ( iliria/ylliria)
i- j ( iota/jota)
But in modern Greek
f/v/b/u are all same
In German Y is called upsilon.
Thank you for providing more evidence that Y souns proto Germanic. And thus ancient Y couldn't have possibly sounded as the video describes.
He is just misleading people into a false science. I really wonder if he had ever even come go Greece.
In albanian we pronounce the letter y as ⟨y⟩
Why does French pronounce u and ou just like Greek? Is there a reason behind that?
A similar chain vowel shift occurred
What about υ as ϝ; isnt the word ὑετός pronounced ϝετός;
It is not; it is /hy:etos/
@@polyMATHY_Luke ok but what about words where Υ is in place of Ϝ? Is it pronounced the same there? And doesn't the change from αυ ευ to αβ/φ εβ/φ imply that Υ has a semivowel? Like aw or ew.
@@polyMATHY_LukeYou are simply wrong. You are producing a sound that's completely alien to Mediterranean languages, yet the "f" sound is everywhere to be found all around the Mediterranean... Italian, Spanish and Greek.
So as a Greek, I bid you to seek much deeper than your books. They are just wrong.
Think about it. Visit Greece, visit Italy, visit Spain. See the similarities.
Now try to imagine any of them producing the au sound of tau.
T is taf not tau.
"Ypsilon" means "I thin" ("psilon"= "thin" in neutral gender). How could it be pronounced as "OU"? Or vice-versa: why was this letter given such a misleading name?
Because what this video is saying is just WRONG information. Its a shame that not even the academics can get Greek right.
Here they produce a sound that sounds absolutely alien to all Mediterranean languages, and yet, not a single second thought was ever given.
Let me elaborate. In the East Roman period, the pronunciations of οι and υ have merged, and if they hear the vowel υ, they couldn't differentiate if it was either οι or υ (a same thing happened to ε and αι as well) ‒ therefore the Romans added the ψιλόν onto the original vowels (ε, υ) to differentiate them from the former diphthongs (αι, οι)
The merge of υ and ι happened centuries later from that.
the fact that you can write ιηυειοιυι in modern greek and read it as "iiiiii" is so funny to me
edit: actually its probably more like "iiviii" according to the rules of υ
There was a joke among linguists about an ancient Greek phrase that would utilise all of those, and would sound just /iii/ with modern Greek pronunciation XD. I can't recall the phrase though...
οι υιοι is pronounced now as /i i'i/
"iiiiii" in most cases,
"iiviii" or "iifiii" in some cases.
υι is a rare one.
All that sounded, pronounced as "i", but when writed ofcourse must be follows the grammatical rules. For example the word ειδήσεις = news cant be writed as for example υδισοις, is totally wrong.
Also ι,η,υ,ει,οι read it as ι,η,υ,ει,οι. Sounded, pronounced as ι.
i just pronounced all of them(by saying the first letter of a word that starts with each) and observed my mouth taking different shape in all of them, even if they sound similar they are not
just do the iii sound but have your mouth fixed on different shape
οι, mouth had the shape of when we say "o" (but not with the french accent)
ει, mouth had shape of when we say "e" as in enemy
υ, the lower lip was out a bit
υι as in master "yi"
ι, mouth had shape as when we say "a" as in animal
η, mouth was shaped as something between ει and ι
It's funny how in French we name the letter ''y'' literally ( i-grecque) But we pronounce like ''ee'' , or French ''i''
while our ''u'' letter sound like ''ü'' Like Greek ''y'' in those times ... but also like in English it is a consonant like yellow.
Both vowel and consonant ... We are freak hahaha
Indeed!
Actually in Ancient Greek is [polymätʰy]
Not necessarily ruclips.net/video/5lcIcYFveII/видео.html
@@polyMATHY_LukeYes Johnathan is right.
Im sorry to say this. But this is just wrong.
And my reasoning is very simple.
It just sounds so amazingly ALIEN towards the REST of the sounds you would expect from any Mediterranean country.
Its almost impossible to miss, that Spain, Italy and Greece, languages sound extremely close to each other.
So how can it be the case that we have all of a sudden a letter that doesn't sound Mediterranean at all. But instead it sounds almost from Asian origin or proto Germanic / English origination?
Tau was Taf. Not tau.
Tau sounds so ABSOLUTELY alien to how Greek, Italian and Spanish sound, I don't know of many words in any of these languages, that actually produce the "au" "άου" sound of the "tau".
While the "f" sound is EVERYWHERE to be found in both Greek, Spanish and Italian.
So as a native Greek, I can tell you that not only Im not convinced. I feel attacked in a personal level from this misinformation.
Im sorry but your studies are incomplete and sadly completely invalid.
Αυτό είναι λάθος. Εδώ μπορείς να ξεκινήσεις τις σπουδές σου: Vox Graeca, Η προφορά της ελληνικής την κλασική εποχή, by W. Sidney Allen (Modern Greek translation)
ins.web.auth.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=690:vox-graeca-the-pronunciation-of-classical-greek&catid=93&Itemid=270&lang=en
Having a good read of the comments, I wonder if the search for "the truth" isn't somewhat obscured by differential evolution in time and place as I have observed in my lifetime in English. Initially, I grew up thinking, Southern/SE English was considered normal, then moving to Europe, BBC English reigned supreme. With Media becoming more international, US English crept in but was not welcomed. As the world shrunk, South African English was what foreigners wanted to learn as it was clearer (and probably had fewer dialects to confuse them). Now, everyone wants to be Californian (elsewhere) - but without the Spanish influence.
So now RUclips is out little stateless country of dialects and is likely to roll us into a single dialect as more of our lives are online.
What were the influences since 3000 years ago to make a single historically correct dialect of Greek?
These differences and changes are well attested, both regionally and chronologically. Everything that is knowable with the evidence we have, which is extensive, is something I explore on this channel.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Luke, I've followed you and admired your perspectives but seeing how languages evolve in my lifetime, I cannot say that anyone can track or attest anything well. The Cretan Greek dialect(s) for instance have influences that vary from village to village with Turkish, Venetian/Italian, WW2 Italian, French all thrown in to varying degrees and depend very much on the topic being discussed. The accents also vary as much as from a desire to belong as a desire to modernise - and this in a society that was literally shaped by outside Egyptian, Byzantine, Ottoman, Venetian and the Barbary coast pirates with pro and reactionary influences swaying development and regression...
@@christopherberry8519 Obviously we can't with certainty reconstruct every single dialect of every single village, but what we can do is track when changes appear and how they spread accross geography. You shouldn't conflate our inability to know the exact way a particular person in a particular village in a particular year spoke, with our ability to know how *most* people were pronouncing a certain sound accross time and space. I also think part of the issue is that a lot of this gets mystified, for instance you mention:
*The Cretan Greek dialect(s) for instance have influences that vary from village to village with Turkish, Venetian/Italian, WW2 Italian, French all thrown in to varying degrees*
But this isn't really true. Cretan Greek has loan words from various sources, but there's basically no evidence of systemic changes in things like phonology from any of these sources. Laymen have a tendency to attribute language change to foreign influence far too often, because it's the most intuitive form of linguistic shift, but the reality is that most changes are internal and accumulate generation by generation with no external influence required.
To give you an analogy for this whole thing, imagine you told someone that computers were first created in the 20th century, and their response was "well we have no idea what was going on in random villages all over the world 2,000 years ago, so how do you know they didn't all have computers already?"
@@Philoglossos Some good points that you raise, certainly. I think you may be a little hasty with your analogy though. Certainly, we have no record of electrified or mechanical computers for other places but for language and words, we have their development and etymologies. The absence or a record logically doesn't count as evidence of it's prior existence - one would expect a burden of proof commensurate with the claim.
Tails and dogs come to mind when looking at linguistics - especially in Greece which is always trying to drive with eyes stuck firmly to the mirror.
I guess I'd have to explain. Creating an average "Greek" that will always be different to any spoken or written Greek is defining the language to suit the population group and not the other way round. We have many examples of languages that are "distinct" but understandable by both populations across Europe and whether we call them a language or a dialect is a matter of Politics and it's propaganda arm, History rolled into the same sleeping bag.
Calabrian, Cypriot and Albanian "dialects" among others are more or less intelligible - some less than Dutch is to Germans - or should I throw Luxembourgish into the mix?
Crete joined Greece in 1912 but I'd argue that if the Ottoman plan for Crete had worked, it could have had the same fate as former Greek speaking areas in Anatolia.
I guess this is where my frustration lies - with the victors re-writing ancient history to forge a Nationalistic narrative with the truth often being whatever the victors could pay "Historians" and the Learned propagandists to write - often the price being their own lives.
It's easy to overlook that when livelihoods and one's life is in the balance, allegiances, religions and culture all become more fluid in the sands of time. Death, oppression and "population relocation" are all part of cultural and political cleansing which no individual can withstand.
Similarly, forcing populations, places and people into linguistic categories looses sight of the fact that these categories are generalizations and that there are fuzzy edges to these categories leaving a spectrum of truth being pulled back and forth by central influences with the passing of time and even these generalisations become torn, separated or stretched as populations evolve - or as with what is happening with the Internet, re-merging to some degree. Fascinating.
μTorrent! 😄
Pyrrham nominarunt, quoniam capillis flavis fuit et Graece rufum "pyrrhon" dicitur
I see the y and I from hieroglyphics comes from Greek